Dragon Ball (anime)

Dragon Ball (ドラゴンボール,Doragon Bōru) is an adaptation of the first portion of Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball manga. It is composed of 153 episodes around 20-minutes long and ran on Fuji TV from February 26, 1986 to April 12, 1989. The series average rating was 21.2%, with its maximum being 29.5% (Episode 47) and its minimum being 13.7% (Episode 110). Despite its success, Dragon Ball was overshadowed by its more action-oriented sequel series, Dragon Ball Z. Dragon Ball depicted Goku's childhood, while Dragon Ball Z depicted his adulthood. Both are adapted from the same manga.

Contents

Production history

Original series

Title card in the original Japanese version

Dragon Ball started off as a manga series called Dragon Boy. The story depicted a young boy named Tanton and his quest to return a princess to her homeland. The series was a loose adaptation of the Chinese legend Journey to the West, depicting monkey king Sun Wukong. Due to the series' unpopularity, Toriyama re-wrote Dragon Boy, adapting it as Dragon Ball. All the character's personalities were changed except for Goku. The re-adaptation named Dragon Ball became a hit.

Broadcast

Two previous attempts at releasing Dragon Ball to American audiences failed. The first attempt was in 1989 from Harmony Gold USA (the company that previously dubbed Robotech). It featured strange name changes for nearly all the characters, such as changing Goku to "Zero" and Korin to "Whiskers the Wonder Cat". It was test-marketed in several cities, but was never broadcast to the general public; therefore it is referred to as "The Lost Dub" by fans.

The second and more well-known attempt was in 1995 with only the first 13 episodes dubbed and aired in first-run syndication. This release was a joint-production between Funimation, Seagull Entertainment, and BLT Productions, with a dubbing voice cast similar to Funimation's initial dub of Dragon Ball Z. These original 13 dubbed episodes were later released to home video by KidMark as "Dragon Ball: The Saga of Goku."

The earlier 1995 dub's logo, which lasted 13 episodes and also appears on some older home video releases

After Dragon Ball Z became immensely popular on Cartoon Network's Toonami block, Dragon Ball was re-translated into English by Funimation's in-house ADR studio for redistribution in the U.S. The complete original series aired on Cartoon Network's Toonami from August 20, 2001 to December 1, 2003. Unlike the theme songs for Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT, Funimation made English versions of the original Japanese opening (OP) and ending (ED) themes for these episodes and left in the original background music (which they would later also do with their dubs of Dragon Ball Z Kai and Dragon Ball Super). Some insert (IN) songs were taken out or have talking over them.

Censorship

The U.S. version of Dragon Ball that was aired on Cartoon Network (before that, it was aired in syndication and on NBC in select cities) had many edits done to it. Most of the edits were digital cosmetic changes, which were done to remove nudity and blood, and dialogue edits. Sometimes, some scenes were deleted altogether, either to save time or cut out strong violence.

For example, when Goku dives into the water naked to kick a fish he catches for dinner, a digital water splash was added on his groin; on other occasions when he is naked, he has some digital underwear added. Also, references to alcohol and drugs were removed, for example, when Jackie Chun uses Drunken Fist in the 21st World Martial Arts Tournament, Funimation called it the "Mad Cow Attack" (coincidentally, there was a real life Mad Cow epidemic shortly after the episode aired). Also, the famous "No Balls!" scene was deleted from episode 2, and when Bulma puts panties on the fishing hook to get Oolong (in fish form), they digitally painted away the panties and replaced it with some money. Also, a number of creative changes were made to the dialogue. For example, when Puar says why Oolong was expelled from school, instead of saying that he stole the teacher's panties, they say that he stole the teacher's "papers."

A lot of older fans hated these changes, because they felt it was butchering the original show's humor and dumbing it down. These edits, however, were necessary in order to have the show aired on TV. The DVDs do not contain these edits.

Reception

Original author of the manga, Akira Toriyama, held a great deal of respect for the Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z animes and those that developed them. Toriyama also admired the fact that the anime had original stories created by the animation team, and stated that he considered the Dragon Ball anime to be equal in importance to the Dragon Ball manga.[1]

Public service videos

Live-action

Dragon Ball (1990 Korean film)

Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins

Main article: Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins
A live-action version of the popular Japanese animated series. An evil king has been stealing the mystical "Dragon Pearls" in an attempt to possess them all. When all but one of the pearls has been stolen, the former guardians of the magic jewels decide to band together and take action. Led by a pig-headed wizard and a half-turtle martial arts master, the team takes on the king's army in a desperate bid to stop him from gaining control of the pearls.

Made in Taiwan and released in 1991, this feature has actually been released in the US as Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins (originally titled Xin Qi long zhu Shen long de chuan shuo, or New Dragon Ball: The Legend of Shenlong). While this movie does not follow Toriyama's concept exactly, it is a lot closer to it than it is to any traditional Chinese legends.

Dragonball Evolution

Main article: Dragonball Evolution
A live-action version of the series, made in the United States. The movie retains the basic notion of Dragon Ball, but there are several major changes in the story and characters. The movie depicts Goku's training and his confrontation with Lord Piccolo.

Funimation Remastered Season and Movie Sets

Main article: Funimation Remastered Box Sets
In 2009, after the release of the Remastered Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT Season DVD Boxsets, Funimation announced that they would begin releasing Dragon Ball in Remastered Format beginning September later that year. They are presented in their Original Aspect Ratio 4:3 and are presented in a 5 Disc Boxset. Unlike the Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT Sets, the Dragon Ball Sets only include a 5.1 English Voice Track with Original Japanese Background Audio and Original Japanese Mono as Dragon Ball had never had an American Soundtrack.

On December 28, 2010, Funimation released Dragon Ball: Curse of the Blood Rubies to DVD and Blu-ray uncut and re-dubbed with their Dragon Ball Z Kai voice cast to Region 1 DVD. A complete box set containing all four Dragon Ball Movies was released in February 2011.[2] All movies retain their original Funimation dub with the exception of Curse of the Blood Rubies.